When Sacha Baron Cohen speaks Kazakh it is mostly Hebrew disguised by a heavy fake Eastern European accent. The Hebrew is quite understandable and contains many in-jokes. Baron Cohen admitted this in a rare "out of character" radio interview on National Public Radio in the USA.

Rupert Murdoch announced in early February 2007 that Sacha Baron Cohen had signed on to do another Borat film with FOX. This was contradicted, however, by an interview with Cohen himself stating that Borat was to be discontinued, as he was now too well known to avoid detection as he did in the film and on Da Ali G Show (2003). A spokesman for FOX later stated that it was too early to begin planning such a film, although they still remain open to the idea. Cohen subsequently announced that he was "killing off" the characters of Borat and Ali G because they were now so famous he could no longer trick people.

The Region 1 and 2 DVDs are made to look like pirated versions of the film. They come on "Demorez" brand discs with the slogan: "Is life? No. Demorez.". The "Demorez" fake brand and slogan are meant to be spoofs of the real-life "Memorex" blank recordable DVDs, whose slogan was "Is it live? No, it's Memorex."

At a shooting event in Kuwait where Kazakh shooter Maria Dmitrienko won the gold medal, the Asian Olympic Committee accidentally played Borat's parody of the Kazakhstan national anthem in the medal ceremony instead of the actual one. Kazakh officials heavily protested and a re-run of the medal ceremony took place. To prevent the same embarrassment from happening at the 2012 London Olympic Games, the Kazakhstan government specially guided the London Games Organizing committee on the right national anthem. Since most of the athletes in the Kazakh team are Russians and do not speak Kazakh,they were specially trained in the national anthem to prevent a re-run of the goof-up.

The subtitles in Borat are Cyrillic subtitles. Most of these subtitles are real Cyrillic, but they contain many errors, mostly the incorrect use of Cyrillic letters. Some subtitles make no sense, for example the gay pride parade subtitle reads "Meal Society of the 'Magnolia' manor". Some subtitles are nothing more than a random stream of Cyrillic letters, for example the title of the Kazakh TV channel at the beginning of the movie, and the supposedly Kazakh title of the movie later. The geographical names on the maps are almost all gibberish, except for the names in the largest print, such as "America" or "London". Ironically, the Cyrillic text used for the names that appear during the end credits is quite correct.

The character of "Borat" was heavily criticized by the Kazakh Government, "being a concoction of bad taste and ill manners which is incompatible with the ethics and civilized behavior of Kazakhstan's people". Sacha Baron Cohen aka "Borat" gave a faked press conference at the White House gates on 29 September 2006, just one day before an official visit of Kazakhstan's president. The Kazakh government hired two Western public relations firms to counter Borat's claims, running a four-page advertisement in The New York Times implicitly rebutting many of the claims made by Borat. Kazahkstan has since changed their strategy by playing along, going so far as inviting Borat to visit Kazahkstan.

Most of the footage from the Kazakh national anthem segment at the end of the film is made up of 1980's era Estonian TV commercials. It also features a number of political figures, the current president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev among them.

The nude photos that Borat shows the etiquette coach of his teenage son are actually photos of gay porn star Stonie. The producers chose him because they wanted someone who "easily looked 13-14 years old", but was actually of legal age and willing to do frontal nudity.

The European Center for Antiziganism Research, which works against negative attitudes against Roma and Sinti people, accused the producers of defamation and inciting violence against the ethnic group. Thus, it filed a complaint with prosecutors in Germany (October 2006).

The turboprop aircraft in which Borat is depicted as flying, is apparently wearing livery that includes Cyrillic-looking letters. The airplane is a Lockheed L-188 Electra, wearing Eastern Airlines livery of the late 1950's to early 1960's, and the image is reversed. Airlines then considered it important to trumpet using any turbine-powered engines as "jets". Thus the letters on the fuselage read, "FLY-EASTERN AIRLINES PROP-JET ELECTRA".